artwork by
Fatemeh Takht-Keshian
We selected seven pieces for inclusion in the non-fiction section. The writers fea- tured here write from locations in the UK, the United States, Belgium, Australia, and Japan. Our aim is to capture migration as a kaleidoscope of experiences encompassing pain, invisibility, loss, and death, but also hope, imagination, and personal growth.
The essays fall under three core themes: encounters with difference, trac- ing roots, and migrant deaths. Encounters with difference is the theme that runs across the first three essays. The section opens with Irina Cristache-Taylor’s heart wrenching account of her experiences as a migrant waitress at a British restaurant. Birthday Girl offers a moving insight into the insufferable everyday humiliations that punctuate the lives of the migrant workforce in the hospitality sector. In a dif- ferent vein, William Andrews’ Parkside Demolitionist and Julie Watson’s The Promise of Egyptian Potato Pizza illuminate the brighter side of migrant encounters with other people and culture. They tenderly render visible the transformative power of fleeting everyday encounters amongst migrants as they move through the cor- ridors of difference to find commonality with other migrants. Andrews’ essay is a powerful indictment of the inequalities that pervade the condition of being an immigrant. His seemingly banal interactions with a Kurdish construction worker in Tokyo, prompt a meditation on his foreignness and privileges as a non-Japanese in Japan. His sensitive observations and account of the Kurdish construction work- ers’ prowess in demolishing a building interweave with deeply humane reflections about how the categories of ‘good’ refugees and ‘unwanted’ refugees are painfully determined by one’s place of origin and the colour of one’s skin. Julie Watson’s nostalgic account of her daily encounters with an Egyptian migrant who runs a Pizzeria takes her back to her days as an English teacher in Rome as she revisits the city. With minimal Italian, Julie Watson’s younger self resorts to hand gestures to communicate with Abdul as she makes her daily order of a pizza slice of Egyptian potato pizza at Abdul’s takeaway counter. The Promise of Egyptian Potato Pizza is the story of a cross-cultural encounter between two migrants as they navigate social boundaries of gender, race, and language. Egyptian potato pizza, Abdul’s signature dish, acts like a magnet pulling through the differences that set Julie and Abdul apart.
The theme of tracing roots runs through the pieces by Laura J. Campbell, An Ngo Lang, and Arbër Qerka-Gashi. These three essays gesture towards an under- standing of one’s memories of an original home as a place from where one can start making sense of one’s migrant or refugee identity. Capsule is a nostalgic account of Laura J. Campbell’s immigration journey from the UK to the United States as a young child. She reminisces about her mother’s beauty and youth, her now dead father’s penchant for taking polaroids, and the fears and uncertainties that pierce through her family’s peripatetic lifestyle. The vivid memory of a comforting cup of hot chocolate serves as a gateway to the past; it allows the author to confront her fears and uncertainties as she retraces her father’s footsteps in the pursuit of a new job in a different region of the United States. In a similar vein, An Ngo Lang’s I’m Coming Home recounts the visit to her Saigon childhood home that she left in 1975 to seek refuge in the United States. Accompanied by her children, she nostal- gically recalls her grandmother and the colours, smells, places, and objects that make up the fabric of her childhood, as well as the feelings of loss and fear stirred by a war that ended life as she knew it in Saigon. This bitter-sweet journey back home ends with a moving meditation about the meanings of home. Weaving crea- tive ethnographic style with personal narrative, Arbër Qerka-Gashi’s Retracing their Beginnings: A Creative Ethnography of my Kosovar Refugee Parents Initial Experiences of London is as much the story of the author’s Kosovar parents’ journey of asylum to London as a tale of multicultural London through the lens of inter-generational experiences and memories.
Finally, Marieke Vreeken’s Decomposed addresses the theme of migrant deaths through her own experiences of bearing witness to violations of human dig- nity as a human rights lawyer. Decomposed unfolds as a deeply humane and forensic account of how Doctor Pavlidis, a coroner working in a town near the Greek- Turkish land border, donates his time to help the Red Cross with the painstaking task of collecting and finding DNA samples for migrants who have died trying to reach Europe’s borders.
The theme of tracing roots runs through the pieces by Laura J. Campbell, An Ngo Lang, and Arbër Qerka-Gashi. These three essays gesture towards an under- standing of one’s memories of an original home as a place from where one can start making sense of one’s migrant or refugee identity. Capsule is a nostalgic account of Laura J. Campbell’s immigration journey from the UK to the United States as a young child. She reminisces about her mother’s beauty and youth, her now dead father’s penchant for taking polaroids, and the fears and uncertainties that pierce through her family’s peripatetic lifestyle. The vivid memory of a comforting cup of hot chocolate serves as a gateway to the past; it allows the author to confront her fears and uncertainties as she retraces her father’s footsteps in the pursuit of a new job in a different region of the United States. In a similar vein, An Ngo Lang’s I’m Coming Home recounts the visit to her Saigon childhood home that she left in 1975 to seek refuge in the United States. Accompanied by her children, she nostal- gically recalls her grandmother and the colours, smells, places, and objects that make up the fabric of her childhood, as well as the feelings of loss and fear stirred by a war that ended life as she knew it in Saigon. This bitter-sweet journey back home ends with a moving meditation about the meanings of home. Weaving crea- tive ethnographic style with personal narrative, Arbër Qerka-Gashi’s Retracing their Beginnings: A Creative Ethnography of my Kosovar Refugee Parents Initial Experiences of London is as much the story of the author’s Kosovar parents’ journey of asylum to London as a tale of multicultural London through the lens of inter-generational experiences and memories.
Finally, Marieke Vreeken’s Decomposed addresses the theme of migrant deaths through her own experiences of bearing witness to violations of human dig- nity as a human rights lawyer. Decomposed unfolds as a deeply humane and forensic account of how Doctor Pavlidis, a coroner working in a town near the Greek- Turkish land border, donates his time to help the Red Cross with the painstaking task of collecting and finding DNA samples for migrants who have died trying to reach Europe’s borders.
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